The one who wrote Coraline, and co-wrote the book of Good Omens and made the TV show, also the Sandman comics writer and co-creator who made the TV show of that. Is still alive and just as inexplicably still on Tumblr.
I don’t know. There are 78,548 unanswered asks right now, though, if that helps.
I remembered you answered a similar question not too long ago. (15 days and 104 new answered asks ago, if I counted right) So in the last 15 days you’ve gotten 1,085 asks.
So about 500ish asks a week would be a safe estimation even if I counted a bit wrong.
Sounds about right. And I normally answer an average of 5 a day, at a guess. So I’ve probably answered over a hundred in the last two weeks.
Hello Mr. Gaiman... I know this ask is kind of unusual, but right now I feel so heartbroken and hurt.
Do you think that having a soft heart is wrong? Is it not viable today?
We live in a decadent world full of shitty people and harsh truths; and my boyfriend thinks I should be more cold-hearted, because "life isn't like the books you read".
I know that!! But I can try! Why I should behave like everyone else? I still believe in goodness, and tenderness, and love. I hold so close to my heart all of the ideals that people like you, or Lewis or Tolkien, wrote in their books.
Maybe I'm naïve, but I think that quote from The Silver Chair (Lewis) express exactly what I feel: “I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.”
Do you get the sentiment? Is not that I believe in magical worlds or talking lions... But in the firmness of their convictions.
Am I childish? I'm a grown up, living in this world where people expect from us that we treat each other with coldness, and having a tender heart and is treated with disdain and mockery.
I feel so sad, and I hope you could answer me. If not, I won't be disappointed, just wanted to vent my feelings... And, sir, I respect you so much.
Hope you can understand me.
We set our own standards. I tend to err, where I can, on the side of softness, kindness and forgiveness, because I’d like to live in a softer, kinder and more forgiving world. (And I’ve also learned that when people tell me things about how I should change “for my own good” that my own good is normally the last thing that they care about and that I should run hard and fast in the other direction.)
No, you’re not childish. And it wouldn’t matter if you were. Children tend towards kindness and are outraged, when they perceive it, by unfairness. (And another C.S. Lewis quote for you: “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”)
I reacted to the ask about nudity, it reminded me of something I wanted to tell you about the show: A lot of the things in the show are… I don’t know the best word for it, but perhaps ”milder” can suffice? than in the comics. And I just wanted to say that I’m grateful for it. I don’t feel like the show is censored in any way, but things that are gorey and uncomfortable in the comics would have been almost unbearable in live action-form, at least for me personally. (Calliopes story is a very good example of it I feel - if some scenes were as…. detailed as they are in the comic it would’ve upset me too much to watch.) The show feels kinder, without losing depth and honesty. Thank you for that.
A lot of it is just deciding what we were going for in the comic and trying to create that effect with television rather than with static drawn images. Things that are hard but okay as drawings might be much darker and more painful when you are seeing them happen to real people.
Have you by any chance accepted (or plan to accept) any new writing commissions from someone with the initials RTD for a TV show that's been on for a half century or so?
If Russell asked, I’d say yes if I could, but time is a reality, and I have things that people are waiting for and limited amounts of time to do my writing in. (I was asked to write an episode for Peter Capaldi’s Doctor, but writing and making Good Omens ate all the time. Joe Straczynski asked me to write an episode of Babylon 5 when the pilot was approved, and I managed it for season 5.)
Hang on. What happened to the nudity in the Sandman, the one where Morpheus spent pretty much the entire first episode naked? The one with all the naked humans in Dream of a Thousand Cats? It was there… and there was even some extra nakedness, like Ken’s dream.
The only real nudity we lost was keeping Calliope dressed. In the comic her nakedness, like Morpheus’s, indicated helplessness and being imprisoned. On TV, we weren’t sure that it would have come across like that, and wanted to try and create a Calliope with more agency and dignity.
Is it safe to assume there were similar thoughts put into clothing Despair? I personally find her comic design to have a very intimidating and overpowering feel to it while still making her appear muted and vulnerable, but I can easily see how that wouldn’t translate too well on the screen.
With Despair, it was less about the nudity and more about the trying to create a character we didn’t have to CGI entirely, but who would work on the same level of reality as Desire. Reproducing the Despair in the comics would be possible, but enormously expensive, time-consuming and difficult, and we decided to get a fabulous actor in and use our limited resources on other things.
What happened to all the nudity in The Sandman? The comic was full of nudity. Has Netflix gone soft?
Hang on. What happened to the nudity in the Sandman, the one where Morpheus spent pretty much the entire first episode naked? The one with all the naked humans in Dream of a Thousand Cats? It was there… and there was even some extra nakedness, like Ken’s dream.
The only real nudity we lost was keeping Calliope dressed. In the comic her nakedness, like Morpheus’s, indicated helplessness and being imprisoned. On TV, we weren’t sure that it would have come across like that, and wanted to try and create a Calliope with more agency and dignity.
